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Posted by: volcanopele Sep 17 2008, 06:26 PM

No, it's not Santa (or was this one Easter Bunny). Everyone's favorite egg-shaped world now has a name: Haumea, from Hawaiian mythology. Haumea's two moons have been named Hi'iaka (still one of my favorite volcanoes on Io, along with Gish Bar, Thor, and Tvashtar) and Namaka, both daughters of Haumea. Of course, this opens up the possibility that a third moon would be named Pele.

Definitely prefer this to Makemake.

Posted by: Paolo Amoroso Sep 17 2008, 06:34 PM

http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008/09/haumea.html.


Paolo Amoroso

Posted by: laurele Sep 18 2008, 02:29 AM

Post on planetary definition deleted. RULES ARE RULES. - Admin

Posted by: PhilCo126 Sep 18 2008, 08:54 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haumea_(dwarf_planet)

http://www.astro.yale.edu/smarts/smarts1.3m.html

http://pegasus.astro.yale.edu/smarts/

Posted by: Vultur Sep 19 2008, 08:17 PM

That is a weird-looking thing. Looks sort of like Mesklin from Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity".

I wonder if New Horizons will find other oddly shaped KBOs?

Posted by: Mark6 Nov 20 2008, 03:43 AM

I would say even weirder. Mesklin was shaped like a freesbie, which more or less makes sense -- a rapidly spinning sphere flattens out, thus its rotation slows down to preserve angular momentum until equilibrium is reached. But Haumea is an elongated ellipsoid with longest axis in equatorial plane, like an egg spinning on a tabletop. Like Larry Niven's Jinx, it is a planet with an "East Pole" and "West Pole", in addition to North and South poles. Such shape is stable, and it likewise preserves angular momentum if you started out with a too-fast spinning sphere -- but how did it get to be that way instead of just a flattened disk? I wonder if Haumea is actually a contact binary?

Posted by: Gsnorgathon Nov 21 2008, 03:16 AM

Haumea most likely achieved its present shape by a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haumea_(dwarf_planet)#Collisional_family.

Posted by: Ron Hobbs Jun 23 2010, 11:33 PM

Astronomers caught an occultation by one of the fragments of that giant impact last October. The findings were published in Nature June 17. http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/06/18/scientists.see.billions.miles.away

The fragment is 55636 2002 TX300. They found that the KBO is much smaller than expected, 286 km in diameter, and covered with bright ice. The article linked above says it is "the shiniest object in the solar system, reflecting 88 % of the light that hits it," but I am pretty sure that honor goes to Enceladus.

The authors suggest that dynamical studies indicate the impact happened a billion years ago, but that raises the question of why the ice is still so bright. Something I read raised the idea that it might be venting like Enceladus.

Note: I put this in the naming of Haumea thread because it is a part of the Haumea family. Seem like a reasonable place to keep it.